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Moist pumpkin muffins, nut bread with blackberries and peaches, sourdough bread made with coconut and chocolate: The treats displayed on the dining room table at Janet Treviño-Elizarraraz's East Side home on a November morning appear so decadent, it seems they must be bad for you.

In fact, these baked goods are as wholesome and unprocessed as they come. Elizarraraz and her guests have carefully prepared these breads, crackers and muffins with sprouted grains and flours they have been ground in a mill by hand, mostly using ancient grains such as spelt and teff.

This is the monthly meeting of the One Bite at a Time group, an offshoot of the San Antonio Natural Parenting community. At these informal gatherings, parents learn to prepare traditional foods from scratch using whole, unprocessed ingredients. This month's topic: alternative breads.

“Nutrition is first thing,” Treviño-Elizarraraz, 33, says, “and there's a joy, there's this really powerful thing that happens when you make something. It's kind of like art, that sense of accomplishment. And you're making your family stronger and healthier.”

Some of the parents became interested in baking their own breads or fermenting their own beverages in response to food allergies or intolerances. Others just want to go back to their roots by avoiding processed foods and using local, sustainable ingredients.

The group comes together to trade tips and discuss their experiments in grinding flour, sprouting grains, fermenting vegetables and soaking and dehydrating nuts. They bring recipes and samples of their cooking. They get hands-on experience in making foods, such as ceviches and coconut milk. They also maintain an active discussion on the group's Facebook page, which has 400 members.

The group has also made its own yogurt and cheese, chicken and beef broths, fermented drinks such as kombucha and ketchups and other condiments.

At the monthly meetings, the children also get in on the action, kneading dough or cracking eggs.

That's one way to get kids interested in unfamiliar foods, the parents say. The younger they are introduced to these foods, the better.

Yes, it takes longer to prepare these foods than picking up chicken nuggets at a drive-thru, but the preparation need not be complicated, the group assured me. Often the key is allowing grains to sprout or drinks to ferment over several days or weeks.

Baby steps can be helpful in adopting what can turn into a whole new lifestyle. Master one thing, said one mother, such as making your own bread instead of buying it, before attempting other techniques.

“If this is what you really want to do, you've got to make adjustments in your life to do it,” Beatriz Fox says. “It's not so much the time as it is getting over your fear of the new, the unknown.”